BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY AND 
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN QUEEN’S 
UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA, 


NO. 37, OCTOBER, 1920 


NATIONALITY AND COMMON SENSE 


BY 

J. L. MORISON 


The Jackson Press, Kingston 

G:lW03t 


BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY AND 
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN QUEEN'S 
UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA. 


No. 1, The Colonial Policy of Chatham, by W. L. Grant. 

No. 2, Canada and the Most Favored Nation Treaties, by 
O. D. Skelton. 

No. 3. The Status of Women in New England and New France, 
by James Douglas. 

No. 4, Sir Charles Bagot: An Incident in Canadian Parlia¬ 
mentary History, by J. L. Morison. 

No. 5, Canadian Bank Inspection, by W. W. Swanson. 

No. 6, Should Canadian Cities Adopt Commission Govern¬ 
ment, by William Bennett Munro. 

No. 7, An Early Canadian Impeachment, by D. A. McArthur. 

No. 8, A Puritan at the Court of Louis XIV, by W. L. Grant. 

No. 9, British Supremacy and Canadian Autonomy: An Ex¬ 
amination of Early Victorian Opinion Concerning 
Canadian Self-government, by J. L. Morison. 

No. 10, The Problem of Agricultural Credit in Canada, by 
H. Michell. 

No. 11, St. Alban in History and Legend: A Critical Examina¬ 
tion; The King and His Councillors: Prolegomena to 
a History of the House of Lords, by L. F. Rushbrook 
Williams. 

No. 12, Life of the Settler in Western Canada Before the War 
of 1812, by Adam Shortt. 

No. 13, The Grange in Canada, by H. MichetL 

No. 14, The Financial Power of the Empire, by W. W. Swanson. 

No. 15, Modem British Foreign Policy, by J. L. Morison. 

(Continued inside back page} 




NATIONALITY AND COMMON SENSE.* 


I N -politics there is nothing so dangerous as imperfectly 
founded generalizations called by fine names; and no ene¬ 
mies so threatening to peace as prophets proclaiming abstract 
gospels. At present the World is suffering acutely from un¬ 
qualified acceptance of the most famous of such abstractions, 
Nationality; and the evangelists of self-determination, who 
fancy that nationalist fervour not merely covers but cancels 
all possible political sins, are everywhere making stable gov¬ 
ernment difficult. It will not, therefore, be lost time to ex¬ 
amine some of the supposed implications of the doctrine, and 
to discuss its limitations as a principle of government. 

By nationalism in the abstract we mean that blend of phy¬ 
sical and intellectual characteristics, which distinguishes one 
group of communities from all other groups. The group itself 
we call a nation or people; the feeling of the individual 
towards the group, patriotism; and claims made by the group, 
by virtue of its unique qualities, constitute the right of 
self-determination. The whole question is at the outset com¬ 
plicated by the uncertainty of the standards by which national 
values are gauged. It is perfectly obvious that national units 
possess distinctive characteristics in very varying de¬ 
grees, but at present there is little consistency shown in 
the science of comparative nationality. For example, 
the tendency at present is to reckon the quality of 
nationhood less by the distinctiveness of the group than by the 
vehemence of its claim to be a nation. On the most modern 
basis, Scotland,which succeeded by force of arms in vindicating 
its independence, before it modified that status by union with 
England, seems to be counted less a nation than Ireland, 
which failed in the struggle. 

The first assumption made by the advocates of nationality 
—the nationalists, let us call them—is that nationality neces¬ 
sarily involves individual liberty. The Irish propaganda, for 
example, founds itself on the idea that a people which has not 

♦Chancellor’s Lecture delivered in Queen’s University, Nov. 2, 1920. 


2 


secured independence of the most absolute description for its 
national organization must be unfree in its individuals. But 
it is clear that there is here some misconception. In the first 
place communities exist which, like the province of Quebec, or 
the state of Louisiana, possess in the highest degree personal 
liberty, and yet are never likely either to claim, or to receive, 
independence in the sense of separate political existence. 
Scotsmen, since 1707, have been steadily compromising their 
very pronounced national identity through union with Eng¬ 
land, and yet the Scot of the twentieth century is individually 
a far freer man than his ancestor in the eighteenth. 

Moreover, the actual proposals of modem nationalists and 
the past conduct of triumphant nationalist governments 
threaten and have threatened the just rights of the individual. 
When the Sinn Fein party proclaimed its intention to estab¬ 
lish a new Irish citizenship “with the aid and support of all 
movements originating from within Ireland, which, instinct 
with national tradition, do not look outside Ireland for the 
accomplishment of their aims,” it was not merely severing 
the connection between industrial liberty and nationality; it 
was actually creating a new tyranny over the individual. For 
no state has the right—except under the pressure of extreme 
necessity—to impose so strictly nationalist a limit on the 
natural relationships and activities of its members. There 
will always be occasions when private liberty must temporar¬ 
ily make way for the public good, but this new nationalism 
attempts a permanent provincialization in the outlook of 
its supporters. In order that they may be good Sinn Feiners 
they must sacrifice some of their privileges as citizens of the 
world. It is therefore not only not favourable to real liberty, 
but an enemy to it. 

It is natural to find advanced nationalist doctrine un¬ 
favourable to liberty. For liberty in politics means the great¬ 
est possible individual freedom of action which is compatible 
with stable government; and both liberty and government are 
not abstractions but very concrete compromises slowly built 
up on lines of expediency out of a? mass of detail. Now the 
true nationalist is an autocratic idealist, attempting to shape 
the ordinary man according to some pattern “delivered to him 


3 


on the mount’’; and there is no tyrant so exacting as the con¬ 
scientious idealist. It was the idealist in Robespierre which 
made him almost the most destructive figure in Revolutionary 
France; and when the future sees nations controlled by en¬ 
thusiasts who wish to shape the peoples of the earth on stricter 
models than God made for them, it will also see a world limited 
in the quality and amount of its liberty. 

There is a second apparently unwarrantable assumption 
in the modem view—that nationality and constitutional gov¬ 
ernment go hand in hand. Recent history has not favoured 
this assumption. So long as German nationalism was unde¬ 
veloped, a German constitution was always possible, but the 
intense particularism of Prussia, the work of Bismarck in 
modelling his new empire on Prussia, and the expansion of 
Germanic patriotism into Pan-Germanism, brought with them 
the limitation of the constitutional rights of German citi¬ 
zens, and ended in mere autocracy. The enthusiasm 
of Hungary for Magyar ends secured indeed a Hungarian con¬ 
stitution; but since the Hungarian leaders were primarily 
nationalists, they built their liberties on the destruction of 
those of every other race within their territory. Incidentally, 
it is unfortunate for Mr. Arthur Griffith that, in choosing a 
model for his new Irish state, he should have selected one so 
fatal in appearance to small minorities such as Ulster. The 
nationalist movement in Turkey ended, not in a constitution, 
but in a tyranny; and the latest experiment in pure demo¬ 
cratic nationalism—in Russia—has, on the confession of Mr. 
Bertrand Russell, delivered over 120,000,000 souls to the domi¬ 
nation of 600,000 communistic nationalists.* 

There are natural reasons for this curious phenomenon. 
Apart from what I have called the tyranny of the abstract 
politician, it must be remembered that nationalist campaigns 
are always emotional and passionate. They reach their object 
by vast sweeping movements and ignore or overwhelm the 
exceptions which would force them to halt and consider. It 
follows that those numerous compromises and subtle readjust- 

* While it is true that Bolshevism preaches an international doctrine, 
it seems fair to say that, like Jacobinism in the French Revolution, it is 
at bottom really a form of perverted nationalism. 


4 


ments, which are of the very essence of constitutionalism, 
receive little respect from the fanatical nationalist leader. 
Again constitutional liberties are won by constitutional 
means. The governments of both Britain and the United States 
were founded by lawyers, working on ancient customs, and 
concrete rights, who boggied over minutiae, and never regarded 
time lost which was spent in the defence of detail. Constitu¬ 
tional government for them was a very composite product. 
The true constitutionalist has also a profound belief in the 
compromising spirit, as vital to the maintenance of his 
institutions; and he knows that the way in which things are 
done, and the instruments through which they are done, are 
often more important than the end towards which they seem 
only a means. John Hampden had no objection either to 
strong government or to taxation, but liberty and constitu¬ 
tionalism lay for him in the way in which his tax was raised, 
and in the kind of ministers who spent it. But nationalism, 
which is always in a hurry and a fever, concentrates on the 
absolute end; seeks that end in the swiftest way; and imagines 
that the national end justifies the most autocratic or even im¬ 
moral means. Its leaders are impatient idealists, who usually 
find Machiavelli a handier text-book than Magna Carta. They 
impose an artificial and despotic simplicity on politics, while 
constitutional government secures happiness and liberty by 
balancing and compromising between several forces, all of 
which claim a right to exist and to exert influence. 

Further, nationalism, concentrating on its own racial 
identity, can rarely be convinced that nations are seldom ra¬ 
cially homogeneous. Eager for unity, and yet seeking a merely 
racial unity, it has repeatedly denied constitutional rights to 
communities racially distinct from the main stock. Half the 
weight in the Ulster argument comes from the historic fact 
that the chances have always been against the constitutional 
safety of groups like their own. I do not say that nationalism 
is necessarily antagonistic to constitutionalism, but that there 
are temptations to such an antagonism, and that these tempta¬ 
tions have been yielded to in Hungary, Germany, Russia and 
elsewhere. 

There is a third assumption commonly made about na- 


5 


tionalism which seems to contradict ordinary political experi¬ 
ence—that the more narrowly national the government, the 
better that government. This is, of course, a relic of the days 
when many peoples lived unwillingly under inefficient alien 
rule, as for example the Italians under Austrian or Papal rule, 
or the Poles under the Czar. This tradition still holds the field, 
and the belief of the newer nationalists is that, if only a coun¬ 
try can reach a strictly nationalist basis of government, the 
New Jerusalem in politics will automatically come down to 
earth. But, actually, the most advanced governments are 
federations of some kind or other. The best justification for 
the British Commonwealth is that its loose framework, and 
great toleration of differences, enable all its constituent parts 
to claim the maximum of local freedom, while, at the same 
time, they enjoy the benefits of political experiences differing 
from their own, and the strength that combination brings. In 
India, the chief interest in the present situation is that ab¬ 
stract nationalism offers a rigidly Unitarian basis of independ¬ 
ence, whose triumph would involve the many peoples of India 
in the tragedy of a despotic union, while the constitutional 
scheme of Mr. Montagu proposes to form the ultimate union 
out of provincial governments, whose success locally will have 
led them to seek in federation a broader basis of rule. National¬ 
ism, then, while it is a natural escape from the tyranny of 
alien power, may easily bring political retrogression to peoples 
similar enough, and friendly enough, to sink racial differences 
in a federal union. Having removed these preliminary mis¬ 
understandings, we may now turn to the normal qualities and 
energies of nationality. 

The most ordinary and least questionable embodiment of 
nationality is literature. Nationalism is a form of emotion or 
passion, which, like other strong feelings, seeks adequate ex¬ 
pression, and so national literatures arise. In literature, too, 
there is not only the satisfaction of self-expression, but that 
which comes from the use of the vernacular—for the local 
language is always held as one of the proudest symbols of 
separate national existence. A local literature therefore is 
usually the first proof given of rising nationalist ambitions. 
But the connexion between nationality and literature goes 


6 


deeper than this. It is possible to maintain that the essence 
of every great literature lies in its relation to the spirit of 
nationality: not only in so direct and simple a case as that of 
modern Irish literature, but in elaborate expressions of the 
literary art of an old unimpassioned people. National pride 
was the inspiring motive in Spenser’s Faery Queen, and 
Shakespeare’s historical dramas, and Milton’s prose. It is 
present in Swift’s satires, Burke’s orations, Gibbon’s history. 
It is discernible in the lyrics of so eccentric a genius as Blake, 
and it drove Wordsworth to turn an artificial art form like the 
sonnet into the medium for impassioned feeling: 

“It is not to be thought of that the flood 
Of British freedom, which to the open sea 
Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity, 

Hath flowed 'with pomp of waters, unwithstood,’ 


That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
Should perish.” 

And what holds good for England is equally true of Italy, 
Spain, France and Germany. But it is obvious that national 
feeling will not limit its operations to mere verbal expression. 
It must push on to dominate all the more important phases of 
a people’s life—its social and political being. Socially, the 
relation of nationalism to the life of the people is almost ex¬ 
actly similar to that in literature. Society is only a mosaic of 
which ancient popular customs and manners, religious ritual 
and festivities, and traditional relationships, are the 
component parts. All these are fragments expressing 
the genius of the people, and so it happens that the true nation 
always possesses a social being as distinctive as its literature. 
Moreover, since government consists, in one sense, chiefly of 
the local habits of the people, and early laws are only the folk 
manners reduced to writing, it may be said not only that 
every people ought to have its own government, but that it 
actually never can have any other. 

Modern government, however, is a much more elaborate 
thing than this primitive basis of custom and folk law. It 
involves international relationships, historical accidents of the 



7 


first magnitude, legal compacts which time has turned into 
natural compacts, and all the inventions and developments by 
which civilization safeguards itself against crude nature. It 
is only the cant of the interested doctrinaire which pretends 
that simplicity is the natural attribute of efficient government. 
We grow freer and better governed through complexity and 
readjustment. It is when this region of the higher politics is 
reached that the real problems of nationality begin to present 
themselves. 

The general claim is definite enough. Even so moderate 
an Irish politician as Sir Horace Plunkett leaves no doubt 
upon the point: “The first and fundamental principle of an 
Irish settlement," he says, with reference to the present situa¬ 
tion, “is the recognition of Irish nationality/' And he proceeds 
to define his terms thus: “Do not let us be fooled by academic 
debates upon what is a nation. We may safely reject all the 
elaborate and philosophic definitions, and just say that any 
body of persons living together and feeling that way are a 
nation." And Mr. de Valera describes the first attribute of na¬ 
tionality as “the right of nations to choose the governments 
under which they are living." But this is not quite so simple 
a business as it seems. To begin with, the modern world with 
its science of propaganda has provided stimuli calculated to 
create national emotion where such has not already existed in 
any strength; and the very practical problem arises whether 
nationality thus galvanized by agitation into life has the same 
moral claim as ordinary indigenous national feeling. No at¬ 
tempt need be made to minimize the validity of true national¬ 
ist agitation. Perhaps the most notable modern instance of 
the true place of agitation in the service of nationality is that 
of Daniel O’Connell in the fight for Catholic Emancipation. 
The cause was as high and pure a one as nationality could 
claim for her own; the people lay torpid from long misdirec¬ 
tion, and required the education of a great appeal; the agita¬ 
tor, himself profoundly Irish and Catholic, was seeking a per¬ 
fectly definite object, and, on his way to it, refused all the 
contingent support which force and crime might have lent to 
him. The result was the restoration of Irish nationality. 
Without prejudging the case for either present-day Irish, or 


8 


present-day Indian nationality, it must be confessed that in 
both Ireland and India, the highly trained professional agitator 
is at present not merely assisting to wreck the existing system, 
but is coarsening true national feeling, and rendering it at 
once artificial and revolutionary. From its inception, the ex¬ 
treme Indian nationalist party has used every weapon which 
falsehood and misrepresentation could discover to discredit 
British rule. “Agents were busy/’ says Lord Kitchener’s bio¬ 
grapher, of the period about 1907, “spreading stories among 
the warlike races of India that government was attempting to 
reduce their numbers by poisoning the wells, so as to induce 
a spread of plague; by distributing poisoned sweetmeats; and 
by destroying unborn children. It was alleged openly that by 
such means the government hoped to render more wheat avail¬ 
able for export to England.” These falsehoods still continue 
to furnish material for fresh outbreaks among the ignorant 
peasantry. Impossible movements, such as that which recently 
led a body of deluded Moslem country folk to make for the 
Afghan frontier, are initiated, regardless of the fate of the 
unhappy victims, on the chance that some unfortunate inci¬ 
dent may furnish fresh ground for agitation, or that a govern¬ 
ment, continually puzzled by the unexpected, may commit some 
unpardonable error. A similar ingenuity in working up public 
hate in Ireland first brings in cold-blooded assassination and in¬ 
timidation, and then when those involved in the brutal work are 
called on to pay the price for the calculated crimes of their mas¬ 
ters, it attempts to put the defenders of law in the wrong, and 
so to gain fresh material for agitation, out of hunger strikes. 
There are illiterate and inexperienced crowds to-day, possibly 
without their full national rights, whom these professional 
gangs are leading by carefully calculated lies, to their own de¬ 
struction, and to breed anarchy out of which, not democratic na¬ 
tionalism, but the autocracy of little groups of vested interests 
will reap the benefit. I cannot believe that genuine progress 
lies along the lines of such pseudo-nationalist advances. 

There is another subtler difficulty in the way of pure self- 
determination. A nationality, bearing all its credentials on its 
face, may have so fared in the distant past, or have so chosen in 
the more recent past, that many other forces decide its govern- 


9 


ment besides sheer nationalism. The case of the French 
Canadians is so apposite, and the solution of their difficulties 
so sound a modification of self-determination, that one may 
dwell on the details. In 1763, French Canada possessed every 
feature which we term national, except the final self-determin¬ 
ing powers, which at that time no colony possessed. As the 
wisest of her conquerors saw, these attributes of nationality 
were not capable of change. Yet with the years it became 
more and more unthinkable that French Canadian nationalism 
should claim a complete and independent right to rule herself 
in isolation. The Revolution had severed the spiritual con¬ 
nexion with France; the battle of Waterloo had prevented any 
possibility of France demanding back her lost territory; the 
development of a British population whose interests were in¬ 
extricably interwoven with those of the French made a sepa¬ 
rate existence a monster in politics. Here was a sharp issue 
raised between two groups of political motives. The solution 
came, not without struggle. First, the rebellion swung the 
balance in favour of national isolation; then Durham’s great 
miscalculation as to the permanence of French solidarity 
threatened violence to the national sentiment. The early 
governors-general of United Canada bore witness to the 
strained situation in despatch after despatch; and there was 
every prospect of a lasting racial problem in British North 
America. But the tact and courtesy of two governors-general, 
Bagot and Elgin, the broad sympathies and shrewd wisdom 
of Canadian statesmen like Baldwin and Macdonald, and, 
above everything else, the extreme good sense of the French 
themselves, and the apostolic succession in political sanity 
which saw no break from Lafontaine, through Cartier, to Sir 
Wilfrid Laurier, found what must be called a perfect solution 
of the nationalist question. Confederation was the answer of 
the Canadian people, French and British, to one of the most 
difficult problems in statesmanship; and no better answer has 
ever been given. No doubt fragments of discontent may still 
exhibit themselves, and no community is quite fool-proof. But 
the answer has been given, and the answer will stand. 

In a recent speech Mr. Lavergne has thought fit to chal¬ 
lenge the wisdom of sounder politicians than he is ever likely 


10 


to be: “When we want to secede,” he says, “we will do it.” 
I take his words to refer to the French Canadian community. 
Now, for two reasons, that is nonsense, and dangerous non¬ 
sense. In the first place, the Canadian provinces in solemn 
conclave, and thinking only of the common good, pledged them¬ 
selves to union, and gave that union the most binding form. 
No doubt laws may be abrogated, and unions broken, but the 
shadow of Lincoln’s legal doctrine of the inviolability of such 
unions lies across the path. Mr. Lavergne and his friends will 
make the attempt at their peril. And in the second place, even 
a short half century of political comradeship, and industrial 
and social happiness, and real internal peace has made the 
federation final. French Canada will always be with British 
Canada, because forces as powerful as nationality, and far 
more rational, useful, and definite have decreed it. 

The parallel instance of the union between England and 
Scotland suggests the same conclusions. In Scotland, not only 
have two most distinct racial sections, Lowland and Highland, 
agreed to combine, but the resultant people, inspired with a 
singularly strong national sentiment, mindful of many hard 
blows struck by their southern neighbour, suffering in the past 
from what nationalist hysteria might have interpreted as in¬ 
sults, or premeditated treachery against the smaller nation, 
found it wisest to enter on a union with England, the roots of 
which have strengthened and fixed themselves ever deeper and 
deeper. The judgment passed by this nation was that com¬ 
mercial prosperity, with its consequence, increased civilization, 
the power which comes from union, the happier political life 
brought by co-operation into an island where discord meant 
wretchedness, were more than equivalent to the full satisfac¬ 
tion of a physical and irrational political emotion. 

The truth is that the very compromise by which two races 
agree to sacrifice something which each genuinely values, in 
exchange for a more available political commodity, produces 
a higher type of state than pure nationalism can ever create. 
The day, then, for nationalists of the type of Mr. Lavergne is 
over, if it ever existed, and nothing but their insignificance 
prevents us from calling them political mischief-makers. Self- 


11 


indulgence in nationalism, like self-indulgence in strong drink, 
is a moral evil, and ought to be treated as such. 

But now we reach the very heart of the nationalist prob¬ 
lem. A nation knows itself to be a nation, and, wisely or not, 
has chosen to surrender itself to the impulse for independent 
existence, regardless of all other moderating principles. To 
what extent may such a people follow their desire? Has na¬ 
tionality any conditions and limitations? It would be foolish to 
minimize the strength, apart altogether from the moral rights, 
of nationality. A nationalist people is in politics what the 
“Eternal Female” used to be in literature and psychology—a 
thing irrational, uncontrollable, indomitable. Reason, expedi¬ 
ency, self-interest, tradition, disappear in ruin before the 
onset of over-stimulated nationality. It has the most amazing 
faculty for surviving utter disaster, and even for resurrecting 
itself from the dead. History is continually repeating itself 
here. Conquest by Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, and by 
that scourge of God, Cromwell; famine and disease; religious 
persecution and commercial destruction; even Irish errors of 
self-will and unreason, have left Ireland still a nation. There 
is a case more extraordinary still. Three hundred years ago, 
the national existence of Bohemia in religion and politics was 
swallowed up in the Habsburg system. Fifty years ago or 
less, one might have quoted Bohemia as the most notable in¬ 
stance in history of the complete success of a repressive policy. 
But to-day there is a Czech Republic, and the Habsburg power 
lies in the dust. It is perhaps the hardest problem which the 
political thinker has to face, that nationality, in itself not 
necessarily moral, or useful, or justifiable to reason, may de¬ 
mand as rights what it is impossible to deny her: and yet in 
the judgment of cool sanity the surrender may be little short 
of a disaster. 

That difficulty, and neither lust of power nor original sin, 
is what numbs at present the British faculty for deciding poli¬ 
tical issues, and makes outsiders say that the British love of 
liberty falters. In Ireland and India it is not a choice between 
clear good and clear evil. It is a difficult balance between two 
doubtful quantities; and scientific and malevolent agitation 
does not make the operation easier. It is essential that we 


12 


who share the responsibility of government in the British 
federation neither lose our temper over unjust condemnation, 
nor attempt to excuse damaging mistakes. But a Scotsman 
may be pardoned if he challenges, by a counter-judgment, the 
cheap but general misunderstanding of the nature of the 
English governing class. That judgment is that the govern¬ 
ing Englishman, endowed with his full share of faults, un¬ 
sympathetic to types of character just a little lower than his 
own, and fatally incapable of successful advertisement, still 
belongs to a nation more humane than any other in the world; 
that he has been schooled into a practical tolerance, certainly 
greater than that of the American, which not even his English 
manner can quite conceal; that, down to 1914, he faced moral 
tests, of a kind which most peoples never experience, with 
more success than one would have expected; and that, since 
one success among ten failures is perhaps the highest average 
that human folly permits to men in politics, the governing 
Englishman stands with very few others in the first class, as 
he does also in point of honour and courage. 

These details seem relevant to the question of national¬ 
ism, in view of the determined propaganda which is directed 
towards the ruining of British, and more especially English, 
moral credit. 

In seeking some remedy for the more complicated evils of 
nationalism, one drops only too easily into sage counsels of 
impracticable wisdom. Long ago when Burke was trying to 
save his country from a tyranny as abstract as that which 
nationality sets up—only in this case it was the abstraction of 
law, not of emotion—he said: “I am not going into the dis¬ 
tinctions of rights, not attempting to mark their boundaries. 
I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions. I hate the 
very sound of them. . . The question with me is not whether 
you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether 
it is not your interest to make them happy.” In other words, 
since government is a practical affair of common life, practical 
consideration, and the ordinary regard for enlightened expe¬ 
diency, are the facts which wise men consider when they shape 
their governments. But Burke's reason made little impres¬ 
sion on royal insanity and public corruption. So to-day it is 


13 


easy to bid the impatient little peoples to have regard for the 
ordinary sources of national happiness; but in a whirlwind 
national enthusiasm enters to dominate the scene, and common 
sense as ashamed hides her head. 

There are certain moral limits which older powers may 
prescribe to the candidates of nationhood: and forgetfulness 
of these may justify the repression of nationalist zeal. I have 
said that nationalism does not necessarily involve self-govern¬ 
ment. Now where the two principles come into conflict, it is 
necessary to follow self-government. For that is a moral 
principle, capable of indefinitely extended application, and 
nationality is only a powerful physical emotion. For ex¬ 
ample, should a newly self-determining Egypt pass, as 
Turkey did, into the hands of a perfectly selfish gang of 
autocrats, I should count England justified, when the occasion 
came, as the occasion would be bound to come among such 
political malefactors, in once more correcting the abuses which 
she had formerly swept away; and in limiting nationality in 
the interests of the fellahin. Or again, should events so move 
that Irish independence must be granted, I count the constitu¬ 
tional liberties of Irish minorities so important, that inter¬ 
vention to limit nationality in the interests of real self-govern¬ 
ment would be justifiable. Or, more generally, where means of 
federal self-government exist, it seems sheer retrogression 
to abandon so fair a chance of mutual goodwill and co-opera¬ 
tion for all the risks and narrownesses of a merely provincial 
existence. 

In the same way, the nationalist claim must be checked 
when nationalism leads to one of the numerous varieties of 
imperialism. Indeed this is perhaps the most real danger 
before the new nationalist governments. Every recent scheme 
of world empire, and every disturbance of the peace of 
Europe for selfish purposes, have been founded on nationality 
The earlier nineteenth century saw nations suffer, struggle, 
and grow feverish under repression; the middle period saw 
them gain their objects; in the recent past and the present, 
we have watched them turn their new found independence into 
a menace to the general peace. Germany rose after Jena to 
secure a moderate and well-earned liberty; but the call for con- 


14 


stitutional liberty passed quickly into one for world power. 
To early Victorian Britain Kossuth was the heroic champion 
of a distressed people, but on his work was founded, not 
merely the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, but the tyranny 
which denied power to all races other than the Magyar and 
German. Mazzini’s idealism founded modern Italy on the 
pure word of the nationalist doctrine; but not even the desire 
for an Italia Irredenta can excuse the imperialism which was 
defeated at Adowah, grabbed at Tripoli, and threatened fresh 
trouble on the Adriatic by attempting to absorb territory 
which belonged to other races. The essential sanity of the 
English-speaking peoples has restrained both Britain and the 
United States of America from foolish experiments. Yet a 
Briton may confess that the Anglo-Saxon maniac, whose war 
cry is “The world for Anglo-Saxondom,” whose prophet is 
Rudyard Kipling, whose journals vary between John Bull and 
The National Review, might have become a menace, had his 
numbers not always been as contemptible as his understanding. 
Britain and America, both founded on the most profoundly 
nationalist stock in the world, have both passed beyond that 
infantile complaint among the nations which we call patriot- 
itis, and which consists in inflammation of the national organs. 

It seems to me that in this choice of nationality at the 
expense of everything rational, and this quick expansion from 
little nationality to imperial power, lies the greatest danger to 
future peace. How may that danger be met? 

It is possible to leave nationalities to secure a natural 
balance through the struggle for existence, and the survival 
of the fittest. It is even probable that many present-day prob¬ 
lems will be so solved. Poles and Letts, Bulgars and Greeks, 
Arabs and Turks, German and French, British and Irish, 
American white and American black, may be left to secure a 
working basis, as nations have been used to do, by sheer ham¬ 
mer and tongs struggles. But that is to confess that the 
great war was fought in vain. The problem really is to find 
some moral and limiting force to secure the necessary balance. 
Long ago the prophet of nationalism Mazzini hinted at the 
solution. Mazzini was an idealist who dreamt things about 
nationalism which another world may see realized, but which 


15 


the sordid politics of the nineteenth century dispelled. Na¬ 
tions were local agents of God’s truth, each with some special 
vocation to follow. “God,” he said, “has written one line of 
His thought on the cradle of each people.” It was this voca¬ 
tion which justified nationhood, and entitled an enslaved 
people to struggle towards fulfilling it in liberty. Mazzini’s 
teaching did not end in unqualified nationalism. He dreamed 
also of the United States of Europe, “that great European fed¬ 
eration, whose task it is to unite in one association all the poli¬ 
tical families of the old world, destroy the partitions that 
dynastic rivalries have made, and consolidate and respect na¬ 
tionalities.” 

That is a prophet’s way of describing the League of Na¬ 
tions; and in that League alone have we a guarantee that 
nationalism will not prove a greater curse than a blessing. 
Three test problems are likely to be presented to the League 
by nationality. By its decision in each case it will justify its 
existence. 

The first is simply the tendency, which I have described, 
and of which Poland has recently been the most flagrant ex¬ 
ample, of triumphant nationalism to coarsen into imperialism. 
To that tendency, the League of Nations opposes the general 
welfare of the world, and the imperialist offender must retire 
before the expressed disapproval of the rest of the signatory 
powers. 

The second test is best illustrated by the actual or pos¬ 
sible conflicts between the new little nations which the war 
has created. No one can doubt that without some political 
guidance the dissolution of Europe into a multitude of little 
states will prove the greatest political misfortune in modern 
history. Neither nationality nor smallness of dimensions is a 
guarantee of wisdom, and we may still have Balkan wars, 
central European wars, wars on the Black Sea, the Baltic, and 
even the Caspian. But under a real League of Nations the 
little powers retain that chance of having the independent 
vocation of which Mazzini dreamt, without the peril of turning 
parochial passions into a fresh cause of world wars. 

The third test of the League of Nations as the natural 
frame-work for a nationalist world is the severest, for it 


16 


affects the self-pride of great peoples. These peoples have, in 
many instances, acute nationalist or racial questions in their 
midst. Britain has Ireland and India, the United States the 
negro question and the Philippines, Japan has Korea, and 
France will soon have an Arab problem in the Middle East. 
In every case there is an imperial or inclusive government, 
and there is also a nationality or race which claims that its 
rights have been denied, its national customs interfered 
with, and grave injustices inflicted on those who have 
attempted to right the wrongs. 

If the League of Nations really grows into a concrete and 
powerful thing, the general atmosphere of peril, in which at 
present all of us live, will vanish, and, with the danger, the 
chief reason for withholding the concession of local autonomy, 
or separate national existence, from provinces which control 
vital strategic points. With the cessation of threats, unre¬ 
stricted generosity becomes at once possible. If, for example, 
Ireland should prove ineradicably separatist, separation, ac¬ 
companied by safeguards for Ulster, will give no one, save the 
new governors of Ireland, a moment of anxious thought. 

The League, too, cannot long exist without creating a 
new international conscience; just as the existence of Christen¬ 
dom automatically raised the public standard of morals. It 
will be more natural for peoples, related as Britain is to 
Ireland, or even as the white inhabitants of the United States 
are to the negroes, to display a greater magnanimity towards 
the lesser race. We shall all more naturally take each other 
on trust—it is even possible that the rise in international 
morality may finally discredit the unlimited nationalism of 
to-day. The truth is that the profoundest lesson taught us by 
the great war ought to be not nationalism but internationalism. 
If we decide to-day to put unlimited self-determination in the 
place of international co-operation, we are only clearing the 
stage for a new and more terrible tragedy; and the complete 
victory of crude nationalism may find itself cancelled by the 
decline and fall of civilization. 


Queen’s University. 


J. L. Morison. 


No. 16, Federal Finance, by O. D. Skelton. 

No. 17, Craft-Gilds of the Thirteenth Century In Paris, by F, 
B. Millett; 

No. 18, The Co-operative Store in Canada, by H. Michell. 

No. 19, The Chronicles of Thomas Sprott, by Walter Sage. 

No. 20, The Country Elevator in the Canadian West, by W. C. 
Clark. 

No. 21, The Ontario Grammar Schools, by W. E. Macpherson. 
No. 22, The Royal Disallowance in Massachusetts, by A. G. 
Dorland. 

No. 23, The Language Issue in Canada; Notes on the Language 
Issue Abroad, by O. D. Skelton. 

No. 24, The Neutralization of States, by F. W. Baumgartner. 

No. 25, The Neutralization of States, by F. W. Baumgartner. 

No. 26, Profit-Sharing and Producers’ Co-operation in Canada, 
by H. Michell. 

No. 27, Should Maximum Prices be Fixed? by W. C, Clark. 

No. 28, Sir George Arthur and His Administration of Upper 
Canada, by Walter Sage. 

No. 29, Canadian Federal Finance—II, by O. D. Skelton. 

No. 30, English Courtesy Literature Before 1557, by Fred. B. 
Millett. 

No. 31, Economics, Prices and the War, by W. A. Mackintosh. 

No. 32, The Employment Service of Canada, by Bryce M. 
Stewart. 

No. 33, Allenby’s First Attempt on Jerusalem: A Chapter in 
Scottish Military History, by J. L. Morison. 

No. 34, John Morley: a Study in Victorianism, by J, L. Mori¬ 
son. 

No. 35, Elizabethan Society—A Sketch, by J. B. Black, 

No. 36, The Condensed Milk and Milk Powder Industries, by 
F. W. Baumgartner. 

No. 37, Nationality and Common Sense, by J. L. Morison, 






